


Clemence, or, the Queen's Gift

by UrsulaKohl



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Age of Sail, Astrology, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical medical procedures, Even more astrology, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 11:38:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19905106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrsulaKohl/pseuds/UrsulaKohl
Summary: I was the captain of a ship of the line in the Royal Navy of Her Majesty Queen Anne, first and fourth of that name. My new lieutenant was a political appointee. I didn't trust her.





	Clemence, or, the Queen's Gift

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Wug and flowersforgraves for reading and playing the game of guessing references!

I sat in the cabin of the _Clemence_ and laid out my charts. There were two kinds. First came the conventional set, with tables of tides and descriptions of currents. A great map showed our projected journey, south across the Atlantic, around Cape Horn, and up along the coast of the Americas. The second set were charts for _Clemence_ herself. She had been christened as a third-rate ship of the line in Her Majesty's Royal Navy on the seventeenth of July in the year of Our Lord seventeen hundred and eighty-two, which made her a Cancer. Her birthday was at noon exactly: the duchess who christened her had held back the bottle of Madeira until the sun stood precisely overhead. I knew her stars to a precision rarely found for hasty human births. That meant I could predict the way her sails would catch a breeze, or find a way to coax her head closer into the wind. I knew this from my reading of her charts, my observation of the skies, and from the watch engraved with her name and numbers, which hung about my neck on a golden chain. Even lying at anchor I felt the balance of her; on the open ocean, we would dance together.

And yet, we were so separate from each other, and she was so small. The watch rested on its chain beside my heart; but time was, a ship had been my heart. I had been _Themis_ , in the second rate, with ninety guns. I rose from my hammock singing with her voice, and slept again, swaying as she swayed. My birthday was the thirteenth of October. It was given to me, when I was pressed, tattooed along my spine with the figure of the white-robed goddess, balance in her hand, that made me _Themis_ ' own. _Themis_ had been lost in a fire, off the coast of Spain. I was the only body she had left.

I felt the tiny shift that meant a boat alongside, and heard my sailors shouting. This was a delivery, it seemed—someone was shouting instructions, with a sort of exaggerated respect that came very near to laughter. A few minutes later, one of the mids knocked on my cabin door. "Sir," she said, "Lieutenant Watts is here, with her kit."

"Send her in," I told her.

Her voice was quick and tight with repressed mirth. "Lieutenant Severn said, sir, that you might like to see this for yourself." 

Lieutenant Watts was not an officer of my choosing. She had been forced on me by command of Her Majesty Queen Anne, first and fourth of that name, the immortal monarch of the immortal empire upon which the sun never set. I had tried to kill Her Majesty, and I had failed. She knew my stars.

I did not know whether Watts was a threat, or a favor, or a joke. She stood before me, a little unsteady from the slight roll of the ship, raising one graceful hand to a cocked hat whose gold braid glowed with extreme newness. Behind her, I saw the source of the mid's amusement: that kit. Watts' trunk was regulation size, but covered with twill in a ridiculous shade of lavender, and painted all over with swirling clouds and silver Chinese dragons. It was a trunk for storing dancing-frocks or painted plates of all the latest fashions; only an exceedingly young and frivolous person would choose such an object, for her first voyage. Yet her eyes rested on me calmly, without enthusiasm or embarrassment. "Find a pocket-watch for her, Mrs. Severn," I said. I turned my back, returning to my cabin and my charts.

* * *

  
Watts was seasick. She had never served as a mid—no surprise, perhaps, given the political nature of her presence—and I expected her adjustment to track that of other new officers. But she still seemed uneasy more than a week into our voyage. I noticed, in the officers' mess, that though she raised it to her lips at regular intervals, the level of wine in her glass never went down. At the obligatory moment, I told Severn to make sure every glass was full, and toasted as tradition demanded: "To the Queen!" Time was, I would have added silently, _This bullet for her heart._ That night, Severn watched me, and I watched Watts. She smiled a faint smile, distant, and then, noticing my gaze, took a true sip. The wine stained her dry lips purple. 

I waited till the _Clemence_ neared the equator. I could feel the expectation, in the tugging of her sails. One morning, the sailors hung in clusters, whispering. They were preparing for the court of Amphitrite, that pretended goddess, at the crossing of the line. 

In my cabin, I sharpened a knife, whetting it slowly and carefully, long strokes against the stone. I rinsed the blade with rum, and passed it through a candle-flame. Then I summoned Watts. "You'd better take your jacket off now," I told her. "Unless you want it covered in sea water. You haven't crossed the line before, and the people seem enthusiastic." 

She nodded, folding her jacket carefully. Her shirt was of fine linen, close woven. The skin of her shoulders seemed darker, underneath. Even still, though, that could have been a shadow.

I nodded at a mug filled with more rum. "Take that mug. You'll want all of it."

"Thank you, sir," she said, "I believe I'll be all right." 

She looked past me, at the chart upon my desk, held open by the whetstone and a pair of weighted brass candlesticks. I saw her left hand move, sketching a loop, the beginning of a sigil of a claw. If she had started with my own scales, and not the _Clemence_ 's sign, it might have worked. I said, "You should have drunk the rum." Then I slammed the butt of my pistol into the side of her face. Her hands flew up and she stepped backward. I shoved her sideways and she rocked, bouncing off the table corner and then falling hard. Outside, the trumpet-blasts of conches announced the beginning of the fake sea goddess' court.

I rolled Watts onto her stomach, pinning her with my knee while I stowed my pistol and bound her hands. It was far from the first time I had used rope for such a purpose. I cut a tear into her shirt with my knife, then grabbed it with both hands and ripped, revealing her back. She seemed to me all soft skin and bones; she was not entirely without muscle, but she lacked the power of sailors who spent their days running up and down the masts. As if to mock that missed experience, her skin was tattooed with rippling water, running along her back. On one shoulder was a cup, on the other a cross and saltire made of eagle feathers.

"You guessed," she said. 

"Who was Watts?" I asked. "Before you made her another Anna Sophia? Your Highness—or is it Your Majesty?" All of the princesses shared the same name, and the same fate: to become part of the Queen, the Queen whose eyes, as an ensemble, never closed.

"Does it matter, who she was?" she asked me.

"I suppose you will find out." I readied my knife and began to cut. There was a jewel at the base of the cup, and another at the center of the cross. They would have to come out.

After a while, she started screaming. The sailors were singing a carol to Amphitrite by then, though, their voices loud. I had instructed Severn not to be stingy with the rum. 

The jewels turned out to be made of glass. They came out slicked in blood. I rubbed it off on the remains of Watts's shirt. Inside was a pattern of crystallized gray metal. It divided into branches and tendrils, like the seaweed called velvet horn. It would be lead, I expected, the regulus of Saturn. The Queen's birthday was February 6.

"Watts!" I said. "Theodosia Watts."

She moaned.

"Listen. You are at the very middle of the world. It's the first day of November. Congratulations, Theodosia. This is the first day of your life." I splashed the rum across her wounds. It would serve for cleansing and for christening, together.

I cut her hands free, and dragged her jacket over her wrecked shirt, and left her lying on my cabin floor. I had respects to pay to Amphitrite. I'd send a mid to find Lieutenant Watts, in a little while.


End file.
